The Inner Life of Animals summary

There’s no escaping it – we just can’t help judging animals through the lens of human experience.

We’ve been distinguishing between “useful" and “harmful” animals for millennia, even if these aren’t the most helpful classifications at times.

It’s easy to sense the inner workings of some species, as we’ve been exposed to them a great deal over the course of human history.

Sometimes we can guess what more familiar species are trying to communicate. It’s pretty direct. When a dog bares its teeth, for instance, we know that caution is best advised.

People who don’t give a fig for animal rights like to argue that animals’ emotions are inferior to our own, that they’re simply products of chemistry and instinct. They’re wrong.

When you think about it, human emotions, like those of animals, are just as much the result of body chemistry.

Humans feel. Animals feel. Sometimes they even have feelings for one another.

However, we’ll never really know if animals are capable of loving humans as we love them.

Now let’s think about the inner lives of animals, particularly whether it’s possible for animals to feel fear or pain.

There’s a lot of evidence to show that animals are pretty similar to us in this regard.

Do you think that maybe emotions wouldn't be such a big deal if animals weren’t as conscious of them as humans? No easy way out there. Animals, it turns out, are also self-aware.

Some animals give each other names. Some can even recognize the names that humans give them. These are indications of self-awareness.

The way a species lives also affects the sorts of emotions it can feel. Simply put, some emotions can only be identified when a given species lives together in groups.

Shame, for instance, can only really exist among animals that live in herds or packs.

Evolutionary advantages are hard to come by, but for animals that live together, behaving sociably brings some benefits. It’s altruism by another name, and it’s pretty widespread.

Take the vampire bats of South America. When a bat returns to the cave after a successful hunting trip, it’ll regurgitate some food and share with those who have been less lucky in the skies. But it only helps those who have shown generosity to it before. It proves that kindness really does pay off.

One feeling that we certainly do share with animals is tiredness. And they need sleep just as much we do, even if the positions they sometimes nap in can get a bit weird.

Chickens sleep standing on a perch. They don’t fall off because their claws grip the perch automatically and without any extra effort. Their leg muscles, which might be expected to move if they were dreaming, are just switched off. This means they can sleep soundly the whole night through with their heads tucked under their wings.

One elusive question remains. Do animals have souls? The author is convinced that they do.

But before we get there, let’s establish what we mean by “soul.” One dictionary defines a soul as “the principle of life, feeling, thought and action in humans.”